Top 5 Things I Wish I Knew When I First Joined Substack
A "no brainer" Edition
Every now and then, while I’m taking a few minutes to waste time on Substack Notes I’ll see that one Note that laments the money grubbers. You know, the ones who have the answer to everything. What’s funny to me is how the timeline then quickly becomes half about “I know the secret to growth and fame and fortune” and the other half “I’m so sick and tired of reading these posts about growth and fame and fortune” and the cycle continues! Anyway, the reason I bring this up is because every single day, aside from the noise of the regulars among us, there are newcomers to Substack. Whether to read our newsletters or to participate in their own way, on their own journey to creativity. It’s to those newcomers I say HELLO and I also say I’M SORRY. Cause I can only imagine how daunting and terrifying and shocking it must be.
You hear that Substack is amazing. Heck, that’s how I ended up here three years ago. Then you get here and you innocently go to the place touted as the Twitter-Killer ☠️ (still true IMHO) and you’re immediately met with a barrage of “this is how you Substack and triple your growth and double your revenue” or “don’t listen to those liars who swear they have the Substack answer” and you wonder how the HECK you got here. Is Substack the same as every other social platform that starts off amazing but then spirals into an abyss that no one or nothing can salvage?
Okay, let’s all take a deep breath. Pump the breaks. Cause believe it or not, there are ways around the noise. Substack is still the utopia that many of us make it out to be. You see, many of us were here when these major changes (Notes) and updates (DMs) happened and so for us they don’t seem as overwhelming. We knew the potential that Substack could be and came in willingly. Many of you newcomers are here from recommendations that Substack is the best place on earth and so warm and welcoming. And it is. Believe you me, it is.
So, let’s take a look at 5 things I wish I knew were I joining Substack today for the first time and hopefully by doing these things, you’ll not feel so overwhelmed and come to see this space the same way so many of us do:
Stats are never as important as you might think. Do yourself a favor and turn off receiving emails about new subscribers, and especially the ones that tell you when you lose a subscriber. No good will ever come from driving yourself mad looking at these numbers that you have no control over. Remember why you decided to join Substack? I hope it was to use it as an outlet for your creative interests!
Substack Notes can be as useful as you allow it to be. Don’t let yourself get roped into thinking that in order to get the most out of your Substack experience you must participate in Substack Notes. There are way more people using Substack who don’t interact in Notes and are still growing. Think of Notes as a place to connect with other Substack users, share your worries and triumphs, encourage others, and perhaps make friends. But whatever else you do, don’t make it your hangout spot to the point where you’re spending more time there than on your craft. It can be a distraction that you can’t afford to have especially in your early days of setting up your Substack.
Put more time into your Welcome email and About page than you already have. Trust me. So much can be gained in your favor from those two areas and not giving them the time and attention they deserve can come to bite you in the butt later. Better to really put some thought into it. And might I direct your attention towards my Killer Series of posts that help in these two areas as well as others that you might find helpful.
Organization and proper use of Sections vs Tags will save you from a massive headache later. I recently made some changes that utilized Tags in a much better and useful way but by the time I learned the best way to incorporate them into my own Substack, I had to manually change hundreds of posts to get it right! Don’t be like me! Write out a plan for your Substack and try to think ahead. When in doubt, turn that keyword or type of new creative activity you’ll be sharing into a Tag. Just don’t get hundreds of posts in and then realize how you can best organize your work for newcomers. You have a great advantage in that you’re just starting out so you can have that foundation working for you instead of against you. [In an ideal world someone working behind-the-scenes at Substack is already working on a way for us to make bulk changes to our posts like adding/removing Tags or changing Sections with the click of a button.]
If you feel compelled to have a presence in Substack Notes, remember the Mute button is your friend! Social media is a fickle thing and no matter how much the company can try to make it the best place on earth for us to stay forever, even they can’t make that statement true for all of us. Sometimes we have to step in and help ourselves. Instead of feeling the weight of the conversations happening that maybe aren’t aligning with where you are on your journey, Mute them! Don’t let a few bad apples, of which there are plenty within the Substack Notes community, spoil your ability to get some great things out of it. Unfortunately, these bad actors are everywhere and can never be avoided but it’s so easy to Mute them. And I promise, after a while the algorithm will catch up with what you want to see and you’ll find yourself needing to Mute people less and less.
I can’t tell you how much better my life would’ve been, navigating Substack, if I’d known these five pieces of advice from the start!
If you’re an OG when it comes to Substack, share with us something you wish you’d known when you got here to make your Substack journey that much easier? I’m sure whatever it is will help the next new Substack user who comes along. Just leave it in the comments!